I suppose you are technically correct to say that Power Line is going very negative, but that's like saying the weatherman (no puns intended) is going very negative when he reports that it snowed 30 inches the day before and that all roads are impassable. Obama has surrounded himself with unsavory characters, chosen to attend a church led by a racist fanatic, and embraced extreme left-wing ideologies. To point out those simple facts may be labeled "negative" but thank God somebody is pointing them out.

Making an issue out of Obama's smoking habit is petty, irrelevant, and "very negative," since it has no bearing on the man's political leanings and probable policy stances. Pointing out that he launched his political career from the living room of unrepentant domestic terrorists who have taken violent action in support of their cause is not only fair territory, it's responsible journalism.

Complaining that Power Line is going negative when it reports relevant facts about Obama is like complaining that your car's low gas alarm is going negative when it goes off, warning you to fill up.

When Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer decided to retire in 1995, she hand-picked local left-winger Barack Obama as her successor. In order to introduce Obama to influential liberals in the district, she held a function at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

This doesn't quite square with the accounts I've read elsewhere. See here for example:

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

That makes it sound like Alice Palmer didn't so much "decide" to "retire" and "hand pick" Obama as her successor, as find that she (and all Obama's other opponents) had been kicked off the ballot thanks to Obama's procedural machinations. No one left to run but Obama, so Obama became her successor by default.

You didn't think The New York Times was going to dig up Obama's connections to graying 60s radicals, did you? They're too busy investigating Sen. McCain's extraordinarily bad temper.

It is not much of a stretch to believe that Power Line and similar blogs may have saved the 2004 election for Bush despite all out war having been declared on him by The Times and most of the rest of the MSM. Power Line et al. may perform the same service to the country this year: at least information about one candiate that large media institutions continue to ignore is being put in the public view.

I'm still waiting for the Keating Five scandal to get rehashed and have said so previously in these comments.

Yo, Save the Rustbelt:Keep whistling past the graveyard.If you think these character issues won't resonate with the Middle America voter, you are delirious.But initially, what this does is give Hillary an argument to grab super delegates - that nObama is unelectable.

And every President-elect has several thousand Executive Branch positions to fill, which is one of the reasons for keeping the Rolodex handy-- and a good reason for voter to want to know what sort of people are in the Rolodex. (You did mention Yoo and Rove: legitimate issues, right?)

My understanding is that Palmer decided to run for Congress after Mel Reynolds resigned and so anointed Obama her successor as state senator. When Palmer lost the special election to Jesse Jackson, Jr., she asked Obama to withdraw from the state senate primary race so she could have her seat back. He refused, and then the signature battle ensued.

Gustavus is right. After Congressman Mel Reynolds was indicted for having sex with an underaged girl, Alice Palmer gave up her State Senate seat to run against him, endorsing Obama as her replacement. When she lost the special election, she hurriedly tried to get enough signatures on nominating petitions so she could run again. Instead of knocking on doors and getting actual signatures of voters, her petition circulators had apparently filled out most of the names during a "round table" party, where each circulator writes down a name, then passes the petition to the next circulator, etc. This little bit of electoral fraud was easily challenged.

The more interesting point, is the utter cluelessness of the Obama campaign and of Obama himself to suppose that these close "associations" with racists, terrorists and other anti-American radicals, that went on for years and years would not be an issue. They seem to be genuinely offended and even surprised that people would care about these types of things.

I don't know about the actual guilt by association thing as being a true reflection of character when it comes to politicians who have a distinct lack of "character" and morals......BUT I do know I don't think someone this clueless is a good choice for President.

I don't know guys. I think the Conservative/Liberatarian blogosphere are being too harsh on Senator Obama.

I mean, if a Republican politician were running for president, and he were found to associate with Klansmen, John Birchers, and one or two ex-Fred Phelps associates, plus have a pastor who sounds like Tokyo Rose, I don't think one SINGLE Democrat would point this out and question it.

I mean, if a Republican politician were running for president, and he were found to associate with Klansmen, John Birchers, and one or two ex-Fred Phelps associates, plus have a pastor who sounds like Tokyo Rose,

DBQ - Good comments. I think the general frame of mind in the Obama braintrust was that the media LOVED Black Messiah and wouldn't dig too deeply...and except for the Rev Wright problem - which required a deflection to a "soaring speech on the REAL PROBLEM of race, not Wright" - the rest could be pawned off as "youthful intellectual curiosity" or as the patented Axelrod "Distractions From The True Issues That Only Barack Himself Could State Were Legitimate Issues."

Kudos to Team Obama for bullying the press into reverential silence about and flaws in the life or associations of the Great Man Himself - until very recently! Where things came up, even his fellow rival candidates were reluctant to break with the Black Moses/Black Messiah narrative of black and Jewish media, the Ned Lamont crowd, hard Left Progressives with Money.

(For fear of alienating their black and progressive Party constituents that had determined under identity politics Barack was racially and through victmhood deserving of the highest deference and praise, and any attacks on him woud be "dragging a talented black man of extraordinary promise, down...)

When things in Obama's past were brought up, they were brought up by the media mainly to debunk as "important". Like the few days of Rezko then dismissed as a "no nevermind, perhaps Barack should have been more wary, but he is so nice and wonderful that such small mistakes happen, as people like Rezko grasp his Greatness and wish to help!"

Some other negatives that will come out:

1. Obama has been mentored by three families of Jewish Billionaires since the early 80s. He and his wife have been given the patronage of careers they control through their dominance of U of Chicago's board of Trustees and placement of other up and coming blacks they also mentored like Valerie Jarrett. For almost 20 years, the Obamas have been squired in the most Elite circles.This indicates that Obama is no threat to Israel and likely doesn't believe a word of what his NOI associates, Muslim contacts, or what Rev. Wright says other than his general contempt for bitter, less educated non-black masses. Obama was placed at Trinity to help "authenticate" this raised by whites lad with no slavery in his past.

2. An interesting thing is that Obama's speech of Great Judgment, opposing going against Iraq, was made by the usual Lefties at the same time, along with such leaders of Great Judgement as Fidel Castro, bin Laden, Vladimir Putin, and Saddam himself.In Obama's case, he had been diffident about joining a rally attended by the Old Left until he was persuaded by Marilyn Katz and Bettylu Saltzman. Katz was a former SDS member tight with Bill Ayer and Bernadette Dohrn. Bettylu was one of Baracks Jewish sugar-mommas, worth hundreds of millions, but not in the Crown and Pritzker league of Obama patrons, but still a big donor. She was also a radical in her youth.

Obama's speech, which he backtracked from and took off his website when things were going well in 2003-4, then put up agains when things went South for Bush and his Bumblers, appears not to be the product of his Great Judgment, but two radical women from the 60s with hard Left Democrat Party clout dragging him, but hardly kicking and screaming, to give it.

3. Very little has been said about Obama's seeking to get a Muslim roomate while at Columbia, and his trip with that roomate to Pakistan.

4. While in Hawaii, Obama selected a "mentor black man" he met with regularly who happened to have been a black intellectual prominent in the American Communist Party and a Stalinist.

5. Obama, by anecdotes, appeared to gravitate towards a solid Leftist course of instruction at his California transfer college and Columbia. He refuses to release what courses he took, his thesises, his instructors.

6. The media has sort of sealed up about the Rep Davis "that boy should not be near the button" incident. With Davis's "boy" comment apologized for, it's swept under the rug. But it may come up again because according to Davis, Obama froze in an American Leadership exercise when he was called on to make decisions as a potential Commander in Chief in a nuclear crisis simulation.

This followed Obama's famous moment in an early debate where the question was a hypothetical - the US was attacked by two smuggled nukes on ships, destroying two cities, what would each candidate do. Obama went into "caregiver mode" saying his main concern was "helping the 1st responders meet people's needs" while the other Democrat candidates answering after Obama said we were at war, their first priority was to defend the nation and neutralize the attacker.

7. The Republicans are assembling a case for independents and Reagan Democrats that McCains record does show bipartisanship and reaching across the isle, sometimes to McCains political damage. And they are assembling Obama's voting record showing his is a consistent hard-left liberal who Never tried to lead in a bipartisan manner as a state senator and as a 2-year Senator before he left to campaign full time. In short, all Obama's present "transformational, transcending old politics" platitudes folded into his "soaring oratory" is just David Axelrod bullshit thrown out to dress up and put lipstick on an inflexible hardcore ideologue pig.

8. Analysis is going on by Hillary's camp and McCains camp about the "pied piper" nature of Obama's speeches - and how they do not match up with Obama's being a hestitant, stumbling spontaneous speaker and decision-maker.

Who are his writers, stylists, image-makers behind the curtain? And what sort of speech coaching has he received to template him after the cadences, crowd control, "command voice" of powerful angry Black Reverends of the highest claimed moral authority that blacks, youth, guilty whites eat up? And who was the genius that combined that with Obama's "supersmart, Harvard Law Review brillant professor voice of intellectual revelation"? Kids are eating up the Saint Martin clone/Professor Knows All product.

Team Axlerod test-marketed their black product with Deval Patrick and several black mayors. Obama is not plagarizing Patrick and the rest them in his speeches, just using tried and true Axlerod boilerplate speech product designed for a black man's lips.

Outside his black clients, Axelrod was also the guy who remade Paul Simon from a hardcore Lefty to the "Bow-tied Professor" and also the leader of the Team behind "Slick" John Edwards noted 2004 "new politics" speechifying.

Team Axlerod was also hired to make Elliot Spitzer "Our 1st Likely Jewish President" likeable and articulate - a herculean task - in his gubenatorial contest. It worked, Axelrod's team of media and image consultants made Spitzer palatable to voters to get a massive vote -then Spitzer cut them loose and showed his true self....

Oppo research needs to track Obama's schtick back. The inexperienced but smart and black Obama is the best raw material Team Axelrod has ever had to work with, though. Better than Breck Boy Edwards, better than Deval Patrick - though he guided both to euphoric fan voter following.

***************Lots of stuff out there on Obama, and as Michelle Obama is marketed by Team Axelrod as Baracks senior policy advisor, manager of campaign staff - scrutiny in her life is hardly off limits by the social convention we basically stick to of "leave the family not part of the political team out of it".The most productive negatives in Obama's case are:

1. Looking at his elitist and radical mentors that have nourished him and his wife since the early 90s, in the most exclusive and rarified of social circles.

2. Examining his efforts at the same time to be seen as "authentic black" through his associations with Wright, NOI, and other black bigots and racists.

3. Deconstructing Team Axelrod and showing Obama's brilliant speeches are not springing from his, but his being a wonderful empty vessel for a Team Axelrod product test-marketed for a decade with other black clients.

4. Serious analysis of Obama's Leftist beliefs and voting record vs. his claims that he is a bipartisan, transcending new sort of politician who will bring us all together with his vast intellect and Greatness.

Ann Althouse said..."Don't need a power line to know which way the wind blows."

No, but Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg, convicted Weather Underground terrorists, were pardoned by Hillary's co-president Bill Clinton at the end of their second term. Does anyone know why the Clinton wind just seemed to blow Evans and Rosenberg out of prison? Hillary says any question is fair game but claims she knows nothing about the pardons.

"On May 11, 1985, she was arrested again, charged and then convicted of acquiring weapons, fake IDs and safe houses, and of terrorist actions. Her targets included the U.S. Capitol Building, the National War College, the Navy Yard Computer Center, the Navy Yard Officers Club, Israeli Aircraft Industries, the FBI and the New York Patrolman's Benevolent Association. In her possession were 740 pounds of dynamite. Evans was sentenced to 40 years in prison. ... As the last hours of the Clinton era expired, Linda Evans was freed. It was 24 years shy of her full sentence." [Salon, 9/4/01]

Does anyone know why the Clinton wind just seemed to blow Evans and Rosenberg out of prison? Hillary says any question is fair game but claims she knows nothing about the pardons.

Well, in her defense those two pardons were some of the ones her brothers weren't bribed to arrange with her hubby, so she might not have known about them. Maybe Bill just figured Linda and Susan would put out if he got them out of prison.

In any case, I think Hillary and Barack should debate this issue, because I can't imagine a better 2008 campaign slogan than "I have slightly fewer terrorist friends than my opponent".